Address Delivered
by the Secretary of State at Harvard University, June 20, 1940

I am deeply
conscious of the honor which was conferred on me this morning. I am happy to
visit this magnificent campus. From it, throughout our country's national
existence, generations of leaders have gone to every corner of the land bearing
the torch of truth and of humanity. There is no more fitting site from which to
survey the great problems and issues that now confront this Nation.

These are black
days for the human race. These are ominous days for us in this country.

There are at
work in the world today powerful forces the signifi­cance of which no
individual and no nation can ignore without falling into a position of the
gravest danger and of the utmost jeopardy. These forces are not new in the
experience of mankind. They rose on many occasions in the past and, for varying
periods and with varying intensity, held sway over human affairs. They spring
today from the same source from which they have always sprung in the past—from
godless and soulless lust for power which seeks to hold men in physical slavery
and spiritual degradation and to displace a system of peaceful and orderly
relations among nations by the anarchy of wanton violence and brute force.

Fortunately,
these forces have not triumphed in every instance in which they have challenged
human freedom and interrupted the advance of civilization. There are times in
the lives of individuals and of nations when realization of mortal peril, far
from making men recoil in horror and defeat, strengthens and ennobles the soul,
gives indomitability to will and to courage, and leads to victory through
suffering and sacrifice. History records many heartening instances when in this
manner the forces of conquest, violence, and oppression were hurled back, and
the onward march of civilized man was re­sumed.

Never before
have these forces flung so powerful a challenge to freedom and civilized
progress as they are flinging today. Never before has there been a more
desperate need for men and nations who love freedom and cherish the tenets of
modern civilization, to gather into an unconquerable defensive force every
element of their spiritual

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and material resources, every
ounce of their moral and physical strength.

We, Americans of
today, have behind us a century and a half of national existence, to which we
point, with justifiable pride, as a successful experiment in democracy and
human freedom. That ex­periment began when a resplendent generation of
Americans resolved to stake on its success their lives, their fortunes, and
their sacred honor. With unshakable faith in their cause and an unswerving de­termination
to make it prevail, they risked their all for the creation of a nation in which
each citizen would have—as his inalienable rights—­liberty under law, equality
of opportunity, freedom of thought and of conscience. Those Americans believed
unreservedly that in a nation founded upon these great principles, the people
could enjoy indi­vidually a far greater measure of well‑being and
happiness than is possible under any other form of political and social
organization, and could achieve collectively a degree of internal strength and
unity of purpose necessary to insure for the Nation itself the inalienable
right to manage its own affairs solely by the will of its own people.

A century and a
half of active and, at times, tumultuous history have vindicated this faith.
The Nation which that generation of Americans founded lives today and has grown
great and powerful beyond the fondest dreams of its founders. This has come
about because, through the stresses and strains of internal adjustment and
external conflict, succeeding generations of Americans have never faltered in
their devotion to that faith and have rededicated them­selves to it, freely and
reverently; because in each generation there was sufficient resoluteness of
spirit, tenacity of purpose, moral and physical courage, and capacity for
unselfish sacrifice to accept indi­vidual and collective responsibility for the
preservation of the prin­ciples upon which this Nation was founded and upon
which it has built its way of life.

Our American
history has not been achieved in isolation from the rest of mankind; there is
no more dangerous folly than to think that its achievements can be preserved in
isolation. It has been a part of a vast movement—in the Old World, as well as
the New—which has opened new vistas in the destiny of man; which has carried
human progress to new and exalted heights; which has, through scientific
attainment, lessened the tyranny over man of the blind forces of nature; which,
as never before, has expanded for the human race as a whole the opportunity for
freedom of mind and of spirit. To this, great stream of new ideas, new
attainments, new cultural values, we have made our contribution; and we
ourselves, in turn, have been nourished by it.

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The massed
forces of lust for tyrannical power are directed today against the very bases
of the way of life which has come to be the cherished ideal of a preponderant
majority of mankind—against the moral, spiritual, social, political, and
economic foundations of modern civilization. Nation after nation has been
crushed into surrender, overrun and enslaved by the exercise of brute force
combined with fraud and guile. And as the dismal darkness descends upon more
and more of the earth's surface, as its menacing shadow falls blacker and
blacker athwart our continent, the very instinct of self‑preservation
bids us beware.

We have the
power to meet that menace successfully, if we, at this time, face the task
which is before us in the same spirit in which for­mer generations of Americans
met the crises that confronted them in their times. We need material means of
defense. These means we are determined to create, and we are creating them. But
more than that is needed.

Men will defend
to the utmost only things in which they have com­plete faith. Those who took part
in the struggle by which freedom was won for this Nation would have found its
hardships unbearable if they had not been imbued with transcendent faith in the
things for which they fought. The task of preserving and defending freedom
requires at times as stern and determined a struggle as the task of achieving
freedom, and as firm a faith.

No more vital
test has ever confronted the American people than that which confronts it
today. There are difficult and dangerous times ahead. Our national independence
and our cherished institutions are not immune from the challenge of the lust
for power that already stalks so much of the earth's surface. Unprecedented
effort and heavy sacrifices will be required of us as the price of preserving,
for ourselves and for our posterity, the kind of America that has been fostered
and preserved for us by the vigilance, courage, and sacrifice of those who
preceded us. We shall succeed if we retain unimpaired the most precious
heritage which they bequeathed us—an unshakable faith in the everlasting worth
of freedom and honor, of truth and justice, of intellectual and spiritual
integrity; and an immutable determination to give our all, if need be, for the
preservation of our way of life.

Without that
faith and that determination, no material means of defense will suffice. With
them, we need fear no enemy outside or within our borders.

In times of
grave crises, there are always some who fall a prey, to doubt and unreasoning
fear; some who seek refuge in cynicism and

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narrow self‑interest; some
who wrap themselves in the treacherous cloak of complacency. All these are
dangers that lie within us. All these impair the faith and weaken the
determination without which freedom cannot prevail.

Each and every
one of us must, search his mind and his heart for these signs of fatal
weakness. The stern realities of the crisis which is upon us call, as never
before, for vision and for loyalty. They call for all the strength of hand, of
mind, and of spirit that we can muster. They call for self‑reliance, for
self‑restraint, for self‑imposed and freely accepted discipline.
They call for the kind of national unity that can be achieved only by free men,
invincible in their resolve that human freedom must not perish. They call for
unselfish service today if we are to win through to a secure and bright
tomorrow.

A responsibility
seldom equalled in gravity and danger rests upon each and every one of us.
Neglect or delay in assuming it, willingly and fully, would place in mortal
danger our way of life and the sacred cause of human freedom. Were we to fail
in that responsibility, we would fail ourselves; we would fail the generations
that went before us; we would fail the generations that are to come after us;
we would fail mankind; we would fail God.

I am supremely
confident that we shall not fail. I am certain that in the minds and hearts of
our people still—still—lie welling springs­ inexhaustible and indestructible—of
faith in the things we cherish, of courage and determination to defend them, of
sacrificial devotion, of unbreakable unity of purpose. I am certain that,
however great the hardships and the trials which loom ahead, our America will
endure and the cause of human freedom will triumph.